I'm reading about Pizzagate and the only thing going through my head is: Why are suddenly people acting upon the impulse to "investigate" these things now? Sure, the Pizzgate rumors are relatively recent, but figures like Hillary Clinton and the Bushes have been linked to salacious conspiracy theories for decades. And throughout all those years, I must admit it crossed my mind every now and then that someone will take these stories too far and go Travis Bickle on some unsuspecting person or persons some day.
The only answer I can conceive is that this Trump presidency is bringing out the worst in people on all sides of the political spectrum.
As I noted in the previous post, I stopped communicating with a friend over politics. That person died recently. I'll refer to him as Droogie, as we had a shared appreciation of the movie A Clockwork Orange.
When I first met Droogie, it was a pre-9/11 world*. We worked late nights in the Network Operation Center of a massive radio conglomerate. We made sure the radio programs were broadcasting properly, and so we listened to a lot of talk radio as a result. After all, it was our job.
Droogie was a former engineer for a prominent recording studio during the 1980s. He grew up in the wake of the Free Love '60's and came of age during the late '70s' and mid-'80s glam metal movements. He was a long-ginger-haired, chain-smoking, leather-clad free spirit and a rebel at heart but he didn't have any particular preoccupation with politics. He was also handicapped-- he was the unlikely survivor of a car crash that should've killed him. He walked with a cane and was in constant pain but refused to take painkillers because he didn't want to become addicted to opiates.
Most of the radio content was right-wing claptrap, but a few programs focused on strange happenings and conspiratorial windage. This was long before people like Alex Jones and other Internet personalities began hawking their Illuminati-coated wares. Droogie had never heard any of these conspiracy theories; I, on the other hand, was well-versed in many of them.
In those days you had to go to weird bookstores or place orders by mail to get your hands on truly bizarre conspiracy theories. Not every Waldenbooks or B. Dalton's carried books by Jim Marrs or William Cooper. You couldn't get magazines and weeklies like Steamshovel Press at news stands. The collected works of Robert Anton Wilson were hard to come by through regular commercial avenues. The most mainstream types of media devoted to such material were the tabloids, but not necessarily The Enquirer-- more like the Weekly World News, which took Elvis sightings and UFO abduction tales to their absurd conclusions.
Nowadays, you can click on almost any link and find strange, bogus, and too-incredible-to-believe articles of the tinfoil-hat-wearing variety. But back in the pre-9/11 world, before the Internet gained critical mass, before Pynchon-esque paranoia gripped our country and refused to let go, you had to work and dig a little in order to get your bemused, half-joking fix of bona fide conspiracy lore.
While listening to shows like Dreamland and hosts like Art Bell, I regaled Droogie with some of the more fantastic stories I'd read and heard, everything from the myriad of possible suspects involved in the JFK assassination to MK-ULTRA/Project Monarch conjecture to the coming New World Order. And I have to say right now, this is a huge regret on my part.
I gravitated to conspiracy lore because it was a way of freaking people out. Most normal people would listen to me talk at length but the looks on their faces said it all: they thought I was nuts. And I liked that. I wanted people to think I was nuts. It was funny. It fit my persona to a tee. But deep down inside it was the same as talking about album liner notes or any other random, useless trivia that I had stored in my memory: just a lot of hot air designed to kill time. It made for great conversation. It also made for great storytelling-- this is also before The Da Vinci Code and an entire cottage industry devoted to the notion that Things Are Not As They Seem.
But the one theory I was not familiar with was the Bigger Nut Theory, which stated that there is always someone freakier than you just waiting to absorb your nuttiness and run with it. In Droogie, I'd met my glorious, freak-flag-flying match.
Droogie was skeptical at first, and I respected that. But over time it began to wear him down a bit, I suppose, because he started to confide in me some of his personal conspiracy theories, like how apricots cure cancer but the "healthcare industrial complex" kept it a secret. Once again, I thought nothing of it-- just late-night ramblings from two unusual freaks.
But when 9/11 happened, it changed the game. Now paranoia was de rigeur. Suddenly all those crazy plots about shape-shifting reptilians ruling the world and Reichstag-like false flags were probable. If I could watch the Twin Towers crumble on TV before my very eyes, then isn't everything possible now? The effect on Droogie was instantaneous: he began to get even more argumentative and started berating me for "sitting on the truth" and crowing about how he would do something about it if he were physically able. Finally I felt like he had pushed me away and gotten lost in a rabbit hole of his own design, but one that I also felt guilty about having a hand in. I didn't want to plant suggestions in his brain, but at the same time I think he was searching for something like that, just as I was. Only for me, the search was fueled by a morbid curiosity, whereas with Droogie it was a way of managing and having control over a life that didn't seem to make much sense. A fall from grace like his was spectacular, going from rock-and-roll excess and pre-AIDS sexual freedom to sullen, decrepit, sterile physical entropy in front of a computer screen because your legs can't support your weight for longer than an hour.
Immediately after 9/11 my paranoia kicked into overdrive, but that's a post for another day. In the meantime, it drove someone like Droogie to embrace the lore he had merely been flirting with. Eventually I burned out over it all somewhere around the end of the second Bush 43 term, but Droogie was just getting started. And he continued in that vein until he died last Halloween.
Incidentally, after a few days of processing his passing, my paranoia returned subtly, wondering if perhaps Droogie had stumbled across "the truth" and had been summarily dispatched by the Illuminati. I think he would've loved that train of thought and he would've laughed with me and said something like, "If they ever find me dead under suspicious circumstances, you know what happened!"
As for me, my fascination with the idea of secret governments and covert operations is still there, but muted and weighed against the march of time. None of the conspiracy theories have come true or have been exposed. The New World Order, if it really exists, is very unorganized. I believe in the Second Law of Thermodynamics more than I do the idea that somehow this planet will be united under a one-world government that can keep tabs on everyone.
But more importantly, the secret is out. It's no longer fun to whisper to others in the know about the Franklin Cover-up, or the Iran-Contra-crack connection, because now (as the late, beautiful Leonard Cohen once sang) everybody knows... or rather, everyone can know if they just turn on their phone. New York Magazine did an article on the greatest conspiracy theories of all time. Presidential candidates are crowing about the rigging of elections that they end up winning. Even my soon-to-be-8-year-old son pointed out the Eye In The Pyramid on the dollar and said, "That's Illuminati!" How the hell does he know about it? He certainly didn't get it from me... which is how he should've been exposed to it!
Let's face it: Conspiracy Lore is In, and I can't wait for it to be Out.
So, in the spirit of these times, here are my top 5 circumstantial clues that expose how the Trump win was a foregone conclusion by The Powers That Be.
1. Trevor Noah replacing Jon Stewart on The Daily Show: Jon didn't want to keep doing it anymore, not with a man like Trump being groomed for the position as leader of the free world.
2. Glenn Beck becomes liberal: Having branched out into many different forms of commercial media, Mr. Beck was looking for the next gravy train. By endorsing Hillary and opposing Trump, he now has a meal ticket for the next 4 to 8 years.
3. Lorne Michaels uses Alec Baldwin to play Trump on SNL: He has Darrell Hammond as an announcer, who does a great impersonation of The Donald. And he even had Taran Killam try his hand at it before he let go of the cast member inexplicably last season. But Lorne needed a ringer for the next 4 years, and Baldwin was his go-to man.
4. All the celebrities dying in 2016: That one needs no explanation. They're not dead, they're all on a rocket ship headed for Mars where they can jam with Kurt Cobain and Tupac.
5. Castro checking out: He was in power longer than 10 U.S. Presidents combined, on his deathbed for almost the entire Obama administration... but somehow finally cashes in just before Trump takes power? Not buying it.
I'd like to add Droogie's death to the list, but it would violate The Law of Fives**, and plus he wasn't as well known as everybody else on the list. But I hope wherever he is, he appreciates the gesture. Even if we couldn't see eye-to-eye towards the end, I still had respect for him.
*= Some events have been fictionalized due to poor memory and artistic license.
**= I'm not gonna link it... you'll just have to look for it yourself.
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